by Brian Walsh
James, a slave of God and of Jesus, the Messianic King,
To the people of God scattered to kingdom come around the world,
Greetings.
When the bottom falls out,
when things come apart at the seams,
when the stock market crashes,
your job is up for grabs,
the mortgage payments are getting harder to pay,
and you really don’t know how you are going to make ends meet,
this is a time for pure, unadulterated, ecstatic and contented joy! Read the rest of this entry »
by Brian Walsh
It seems to me that the environmental crisis is, at heart, a failure and a perversion of the human imagination. Our imaginations have been taken captive by an ecocidal ideology of economic growth that invariably will render us homeless in a world not fit for habitation. If imagination is the issue, then a redirection of our lives towards creation care will not emerge out of statistics of ecological despoliation, as important as those statistics might be. What we need is liberated imaginations, imaginations set free to envision an alternative life, an ecological imagination that engenders a life of restorative homemaking in this our creational home.
And so, when asked to give a chapel talk at World Vision Canada on the environmental crisis I turned to the music and poetry of Bruce Cockburn. Over a career spanning 40 years with 30 albums to his credit, Cockburn has been dedicated to the hard work of imagination, the weaving of word and music in such a way that we see anew, feel more deeply and are animated by the joy of a creation-caring life. At World Vision I was assisted in my presentation by the fine Toronto folk-jazz ensemble, Hobson’s Choice.
Then a few weeks later I went to Christ Church (Anglican) in Burritt’s Rapids, Ontario to preach at a Cockburn influenced Eucharist. At Christ Church the music was wonderfully led by the Cameron Strings. The significance of Burritt’s Rapids wouldn’t be lost on any fans of the early works of Bruce Cockburn since many of those pieces were composed when Cockburn lived in that town.
The sermon “Creation Dreams and Ecological Nightmares” is rooted in a series of counterpointal readings from Scripture coupled with a number of Cockburn songs.
The first set of readings places Genesis one in tension with a number of prophetic texts. Read these texts in this order and see what happens:
Gen 1.1-4 ……………….. Jer. 4.23
Gen. 1.9-12 ……………. Is. 24.4-6, 11, 19
Gen 1.20-22 …………… Hos. 4.1-3
Gen 1.24-25 ……………. Jer. 9.10
Gen. 1.26-28, 30-31 ….. Jer. 4.23-26
Then add in John 1.1-5 as the Gospel and Colossians 1.21-23 as the Epistle.
Now stir it all with the music of Bruce Cockburn. Begin with “One Day I Walk”, play “Creation Dream” just before reading the sermon, and finish it all off with “Lord of the Starfields” and “All the Diamonds.” You might also want to top it all off with “In the Falling Dark,” and “Night Train.”
Here’s the full-text sermon.
“A Bruce Cockburn weekend,” you ask, “what on earth is that?”
Well so here’s the thing. May 23-24, Brian Walsh will be leading a workshop celebrating the significant artistic contribution of Canadian singer/songwriter, Bruce Cockburn. On Saturday from 9.30-3.30, he’ll be exploring the rich spiritual images and Christian themes in Bruce’s repertoire. On Sunday, Brian will be preaching at 10:30am. Unsurprisingly, service music will be from Cockburn’s catalogue.
From the organisers:
Cockburn has always had a loyal fan base, however, there has been a re-surgence of interest in his music because of references to his songs in William P. Young’s popular novel, The Shack. The workshop is being held at Christ Church [Anglican] in Burritts’ Rapids (now part of the city of Ottawa). When Bruce Cockburn lived in Burritt’s Rapids, he wrote some of his most popular songs. This one-day workshop will be an opportunity to explore with others the connections between faith, music, beauty and brokenness in the place where Cockburn’s musical and spiritual journey all began.
There are lots of B&B’s in the area and local organizers can assist with finding accommodation if needed. If you’re interested in coming, please contact Lisa Chisholm-Smith at (613) 233-6271 ext 231 or lchisholm-smith@ottawa.anglican.ca by Tues. May 19, 2009.
Cost is $25 in advance or $30 at the door.
More info including driving directions is at http://www.merrickvilleanglicans.org/Cockburn.htm
Just recently, Brian Walsh published an article in The Banner, a monthly publication of the Christian Reformed Church in North America. We thought we’d include a link to the article for our friends remixing the empire, wherever you are…
People don’t tend to knock when they come into my office. Maybe it’s my location near the bookstore, maybe it’s the nature of the space, but people don’t tend to knock.
So I wasn’t really surprised when I turned around from my telephone conversation to see an elderly woman looking at my collection of tea. She had simply walked in without knocking.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“I hope so,” she replied.
For the rest of the article, click here.
by Brian Walsh
Brothers and Sisters:
On one level it is all so tragically probable. Both then and now. There is nothing improbable about a story of a revolutionary leader, perceived to be a threat to the ruling powers, ‘arrested’ at night, taken before a phony tribunal, tortured and executed within twenty-four hours. As far as I can see, there is nothing strange about this in 1st century or 21st century Palestine. This is business as usual in all imperial regimes. This is the shock and awe of empire. This is the way that empire keeps the peace.
Nothing strange about this. Read the rest of this entry »
by Tom Wright and Brian Walsh
So the guy that we at Empire Remixed affectionately call “the bish” (aka, N.T. Wright) is down in Pasadena teaching a course at Fuller Theological Seminary this week and he sent this dispatch from the trenches back to Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat. We are reproducing Wright’s email and Walsh’s reply, which Wright then read to the class.
Wright wrote (has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?)
Hi guys, just wanted to let you know how much the class (31 of them, Fuller capped it at that) have enjoyed reading Colossians Remixed, which I assigned as compulsory pre-class reading. Some of them have really raved about it. Others raved in a different sense – one said that three times his wife came through to find out why he was throwing things, including the book, around his room in a rage – but they are still enthusiastic. It really made a lot of them think and opened up questions some of them didn’t even know were there. Read the rest of this entry »
by Brian Walsh
In my last blog about the struggle of trying to live a life that recognizes the radical nature of faith in the face of the imperial realities in which we live I talked about humility. We need to hold our knowledge, our insight, indeed our radical vision, with humility. And that humility means that we need to have a graciousness and a generosity of spirit in our relationships with sisters and brothers who, it would seem, “don’t get it” when we talk about a Kingdom vision and way of life that is counter-imperial.
That is my first word on the subject. But it is certainly not my last word. You see, I recognize deeply in my own life the loneliness and frustration that so many folks give expression to in their correspondence with me. When the Canadian Evangelical Theological Association hosted a forum on Colossians Remixed our friend Tony Cummins from Trinity Western University summed up the problem well in his comments on the book: “Where do I sign up?” he asked. “Where do I find this counter-imperial Christian community?” Read the rest of this entry »
by Brian Walsh
I am always amazed and deeply gratified by how many people take the time to write to me emails and letters of gratitude for my books. And they often come at just the right time for me. You know, when you’re feeling a little empty or discouraged and out of the blue comes a word of encouragement.
But there is also a theme that seems to recur in a lot of this correspondence. Here is what someone wrote to me recently:
“We are VERY happy at our church, and they are great in many respects (strong on trade justice, social issues etc) and a real family to us in many ways; but they just don’t get it! I asked recently why, in light of the current economic crisis, no politician has said that perhaps it is the system itself that is wrong. The blank looks were legion! We are trying to work out where to go next – and are unsure how we put into practice (in a way that just won’t overwhelm and cause us to fail) all the things we are and have discussed.”
“They just don’t get it.” Read the rest of this entry »
by Brian Walsh
The Windrider Forum ended in a worship service with the community at Mountain Vineyard Church. The church graciously hosted this group of some one hundred students, faculty and guests. During the service on January 25, course leader Craig Detweiler asked me to set up and read Isaiah 29.9-14. It concluded a section of the service that reflected on the dynamic of prophetic critique and prophetic energizing (readers of Walter Brueggemann will recognize the language).
Not surprisingly, I set the passage up by citing an American prophet, Bob Dylan:
You know that something’s happening here,
but you don’t know what it is,
do you, Mr. Jones? (“Ballad of a Thin Man”)
That might well have been the experience of many of us at the festival. Sitting in movies and having a distinct feeling that we are seeing but not understanding, hearing but
not comprehending. Just not ‘getting it’ we sometimes felt confused and confounded, stupefied and disoriented. Into this context I read the passage Craig has chosen.
As I have reflected on this amazing passage in the context of a week of viewing films at the Sundance Film Festival, I found that somewhere between Salt Lake City and Toronto, at around 35,000 feet, a targum began to emerge in my imagination.
So before reading on, take a moment, pull out your Bible and read this passage. In fact, read all of Isaiah 29 just to get a sense of the immediate context.
Now here’s the targum:
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